Post/Author/DateTime	Post
jadehawk 04-26-07, 06:05 PM	I have always had concerns about the variant auto-death rule, while still liking the idea that there is always a chance that a character can deal some incredible damage on a single, lucky, hit. As such, I've developed a Massive Damage Rule coupled with critical hits to take the place of the auto-death rule, as well as to make massive damage more dangerous for higher level characters. Say you roll a natural 20, and follow it up with another natural 20. At this point you have confirmed a critical hit. In my system you roll again, and if you roll a hit, it increases the damage multiplier of the critical hit by 1. If instead (on the third roll) you roll another natural 20, you increase the damage multiplier by 1, then roll again. Basically you keep rolling until you stop rolling a natural 20, increasing the damage multiplier by 1 for every natural 20 and for the last roll if it succeeds on AC. See example below: Ex. Attack bonus: +5, AC: 18 20 (25) - Confirmed Hit, Critical Threat 20 (25) - Critical Hit 20 (25) - Critical Multiplier +1 14 (19) - Critical Muliplier +2 In this example the character rolled 3 natural 20s and followed up with a natural 14, modified 19. He effectively rolls damage with a +2 critical multiplier. So if it were a x3 crit damage weapon, he would actually have x5. If on his 4th roll he rolled a natural 7 (instead of 14), modified 12 he would only get a critical multiplier +1, resulting in x4 damage. Now, if the character has any sort of damage potential, say even 12 points average on a hit, this would multiply out to (12 x 5) 60 points. This enters the range of massive damage. I use the massive damage by size (so smaller creatures take massive damage from smaller damage results and larger sizes from larger damage results). My additional rule is that for every 10 points you succeed the massive damage # (usually 50), you increase the fortitude save by 1. So if you hit a medium size creature for 118 points of damage, the massive damage roll would be DC 21, instead of the default 15. So, what are your thoughts? My first criticism of my own idea is that it may imbalance the critical multipliers of weapons, making x3, and x4 weapons less useful. But then again, rolling multiple 20s happens about once a session.
DarkRhystar 04-26-07, 07:05 PM	I don't see a reason to use this. What exactly is made better by this change? It feels like a "win more" style ability that makes an already good thing better. I don't think it would hurt the game, but I don't foresee it making it better either. PS: Isn't there a whole forum for proposed house rules?
meabolex 04-27-07, 02:54 PM	Any time you increase the overall effectiveness of critical hits, you're essentially hurting the PCs. Players dish out tons of damage over time. Considering that the PCs are (most of the time) supposed to win, they're supposed to deal lethally high damage. Monsters/NPCs, however, are not supposed to kill the PCs. Creating a situation where you're drastically increasing the damage from them can mean an untimely PC death from what appears to be a normal situation. If you're sure you want to up the danger level of the game for the PCs, have at it. However, most DMs would rather not have crits increased in effectiveness - they're already pretty good at what they do without special crits/failures.
Pellanor 04-27-07, 03:44 PM	Massive Damage Threshold and Results (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/massaveDamageThresholdsAndResults.htm) Some variant rules from Unearthed Arcana on how to handle Massive Damage differently, in case you're interested. As for your rule, it seems a bit much. All of a sudden it's mere chance that determines if you're hit with an insanely high crit. Also does it take into account threat range? So if I threat a crit on a 15-20, and roll a 15, then 1 15 to confirm do I roll again to confirm again? If so you would get some incredibly huge critical hits. Either way, all that's going to happen is that there's going to be a small chance that a character will get one shotted. Every character, from the BBEG to a lowly mook, to the PCs themselves will have this small chance of just getting owned. Nothing quite as anticlimactic as "In a bar fight with a 1st level commoner you get slugged with a bar mug. *rolls 10 nat 20s* You take 50 damage, and die."
Wopple 04-30-07, 11:20 AM	We just do it this way: Nat 20, nat 20, confirm with a hit, dead. Not "dead" dead, but dropped to 0 and stable. This has a 1 in 400 chance of happening, and then you also need to confirm with a hit, so actualy less. This will happen WAY less than the arbitraty massive damage of 50. Also, if someone does want to use massive damage, I think it makes more sense to base it on hit die. Maybe hit die * 6 or something. In any case I just don't like massive shock rules anyways. You have the hit points for a reason, let's not punish melee fighters even more by making them die when they inevitable take the hits they were meant to take.
jadehawk 04-30-07, 12:20 PM	some clarification... the rule was intended to bridge the gap between a critical hit and the auto-death rule. I found the auto-death rule on a 20-20-hit to be excessive; it gives any PC a life of up to 800 attacks before they should have been auto-killed. I would estimate that means every character should have been killed by auto-death alone by 16th level, with most killed by 8th level. On the other hand, I like the idea that there should be truly exceptional hits, so I have figured this natural 20 rule to merely increase critical damage and incorporate the massive damage rule. this does not apply to other attack rolls in the critical threat range. This would only take effect if a character were to roll consecutive natural 20s. I find it odd that the rule is looked at so black and white as it is intended to bridge the gap of two extremes (between the standard lack of a rule and the auto-death rule). The successive natural 20s makes it exponentially more difficult to get damage up to enough to make a difference. So if a character that deals average 10 damage with a x2 crit would have to roll 20, 20, 20, 20, hit to reach massive damage. The chance of this is very rare, 1 / 320,000, but at least its a chance. Now a more powerful attacker who deals an average 20 points of damage would only need a 20, 20, hit to reach massive damage, which is about 1 in 800.
jadehawk 04-30-07, 03:37 PM	Any time you increase the overall effectiveness of critical hits, you're essentially hurting the PCs. Players dish out tons of damage over time. Considering that the PCs are (most of the time) supposed to win, they're supposed to deal lethally high damage. Monsters/NPCs, however, are not supposed to kill the PCs. Creating a situation where you're drastically increasing the damage from them can mean an untimely PC death from what appears to be a normal situation. If you're sure you want to up the danger level of the game for the PCs, have at it. However, most DMs would rather not have crits increased in effectiveness - they're already pretty good at what they do without special crits/failures. This is exactly what I find too harsh about the auto-death rule. 20-20-hit is nice for PCs, but it also means that eventually it will happen to them, and "splat", they're dead. Instead of auto-death, my idea has introduced a way to scale up damage based on lucky rolls. Sure it might kill you anyways on account of the damage (perhaps by dropping hit points or by massive damage), but it isn't certain death.
Wopple 05-01-07, 11:13 AM	This is exactly what I find too harsh about the auto-death rule. 20-20-hit is nice for PCs, but it also means that eventually it will happen to them, and "splat", they're dead. Instead of auto-death, my idea has introduced a way to scale up damage based on lucky rolls. Sure it might kill you anyways on account of the damage (perhaps by dropping hit points or by massive damage), but it isn't certain death. Isn't it better to just drop to 0? That way it could happen to them like 4 times and who cares? So long as their comrades win the fight, they are good as new with some heals.
jadehawk 05-01-07, 12:12 PM	Wopple, Your variant does bridge the gap too, and it seems like a good way to do it. For one thing it is simpler than mine; really it is just a convenient adaptation of the original rule. Have you considered dropping characters to -1 instead to make it a little more dangerous and dehabilitating? However, the rule as is, or your modification does not take into account the damage the character deals. While it does incorporate a "to hit" on the third roll, resulting in a difference between a field mouse and a 1st level fighter landing an auto-kill attack, it doesn't differentiate between the 1st level fighter focusing on combat expertise and the 1st level fighter focusing on power attack (for example). Two characters with the same attack bonus but one who deals twice as much damage as the other should not have the same chance of auto-killing.
Wopple 05-02-07, 09:55 AM	Wopple, Your variant does bridge the gap too, and it seems like a good way to do it. For one thing it is simpler than mine; really it is just a convenient adaptation of the original rule. Have you considered dropping characters to -1 instead to make it a little more dangerous and dehabilitating? However, the rule as is, or your modification does not take into account the damage the character deals. While it does incorporate a "to hit" on the third roll, resulting in a difference between a field mouse and a 1st level fighter landing an auto-kill attack, it doesn't differentiate between the 1st level fighter focusing on combat expertise and the 1st level fighter focusing on power attack (for example). Two characters with the same attack bonus but one who deals twice as much damage as the other should not have the same chance of auto-killing. True, gotta agree with that. While I think it's possible for a 1st level newb to insta kill a Torrasque, I find that probability for that to be about.... well it'd never happen ever in any game anyone had ever if they had 5000 level 1's attacking it. Whereas a level 40 doing it seems much more resonable. I think yours would work fine tho, especially if you took out any fumble rules you might have in the campaign.
Deucalion_Po 05-03-07, 04:45 AM	I've been toying with the idea of instituting auto-death in my campaign, but didn't like the possiblity (however unlikely) that the BBEG might drop in the first round. I think this might be the way to go for my group. Also, you've given me an idea on how to handle fumbles using the same premise of "if rolling 20 once is good, rolling it twice is better", only in this case it's "1 is bad, two in a row is worse". Currently, we have a house rule that natural 1 provokes an AoO from the intended target. I want to talk to them about amending it to something like: 1st nat 1 = AoO and roll again 2nd nat 1 = dropped weapon and roll again 3rd nat 1 = slip and fall prone and roll again anything other than a natural 1 would end the downward spiral just as anything other than natural 20 ends the crit escalation
Flan 05-03-07, 05:38 PM	Auto-death is a bad mechanic. It is not enjoyable. Few things are as stupid as the GM looking at you and saying... okay, I rolled some dice and your character falls over dead and theres nothing you could have done about it. Adding instant death to random criticals is also a bad idea. They're already doing huge amounts of damage, you know, the thing that often kills you anyway... again, from a random die roll. Massive damage as is is basically moronic. Past a certain level almost every time you take damage you'll be having to make massive damage rolls and auto-failing on a one means that DMs in higher level campaigns have to drop the rule for the game to even work sensibly. Likewise the equipment damage on a 1 on reflex saves are poor for similiar reasons. And an example I like to use... for a rule called "massive damage" it is very poorly crafted. I'd MUCH rather suffer 200 damage than suffer 50 damage 4 times. Massive Damage Rule means 200 damage only has a 5% chance of killing me, but 50x4 is an 18.5% chance! It should have been named "The Flop Over Dead Randomly Rule."
jadehawk 05-03-07, 06:40 PM	You know Flan, while I think your post may have been a little excessive you do raise a couple of great points. Massive damage gets easier and easier to access at higher levels. In fact there are certain creatures that can deal 50 points of damage on a single hit without a critical. However, there are certain balancing factors: 1) the fortification armour...prevents critical hits (which cause massive damage) and negates massive damage in general. As massive damage is a variant, I don't know if this is a standard rule, but it just makes sense that fortification negates massive damage checks. 2) magic that negates death effects. A good deal of high level characters can escape death, even when they roll a 1. 3) Abilities that allow re-rolls or negate auto-failure. While there was an interesting thread about how "luck" feats should be called "suck" feats, this is one time when they (and similar abilities) come in handy. 4) my least favourite consolation prize is (true) ressurection. At higher levels it is economical to bring your favourite character back to life. Most of the times when I'm playing in a party of mostly good characters we build up a party fund for just this special occasion. Also, your point about 50 points of damage and 200 points of damage having the same effect is totally right...truly baffling, which is why I increase the DC of the fortitude save by 1 for every 10 points of damage over the massive damage threshold. Against a medium sized creature, 200 points would mean rolling a Fort save against DC 30. While some high level characters can nearly auto this roll (if it weren't for failing on 1s), most characters will have quite the hard time rolling this, even at level 20. As it is, most of the characters who have trouble rolling high fortitude saves also don't have 200 hit points either, so it is a moot point for them.
Wopple 05-05-07, 05:03 PM	I've been toying with the idea of instituting auto-death in my campaign, but didn't like the possiblity (however unlikely) that the BBEG might drop in the first round. I think this might be the way to go for my group. Also, you've given me an idea on how to handle fumbles using the same premise of "if rolling 20 once is good, rolling it twice is better", only in this case it's "1 is bad, two in a row is worse". Currently, we have a house rule that natural 1 provokes an AoO from the intended target. I want to talk to them about amending it to something like: 1st nat 1 = AoO and roll again 2nd nat 1 = dropped weapon and roll again 3rd nat 1 = slip and fall prone and roll again anything other than a natural 1 would end the downward spiral just as anything other than natural 20 ends the crit escalation I would agree with that if the first were a miss, 2nd were an AoO... and so on. ANd maybe for the 5th you could make it like... when you fall, you land on your weapon... 6th... taking crit damage...